Creature comforts

Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island, Australia

On Kangaroo Island, just a short hop from Adelaide,
Stanley Stewart encounters an abundance of Australian wildlife and
finds that a beautifully designed, spectacularly located eco-lodge
is an ideal habitat for humans.

It is difficult not to feel just a little bit pervy on the beach
at Seal Bay. It was early morning and I was creeping through the
dunes trying to look inconspicuous. A few metres away, Australian
sea lions were stretched out on the sands. Seal Bay is their
bedroom. They spend their time here shagging and sleeping.
Naturally, I had come for the shagging.

For the moment, however, all was quiet. The big bulls, who
looked like they'd been neglecting their waistlines, were snoring
next to females half their size, their flippers extended sweetly,
if rather inadequately, around what passed for a sea-lion shoulder.
The only creatures awake were a gang of juvenile males engaged in a
sort of pillow fight without pillows, at the end of the beach out
of parental earshot. For the rest it was 40 winks. Voyeurism, like
love, is all about timing. Had I been here a month earlier, there
would have been no end of curtain-twitching excitements.

Like so many bedrooms, the beach at Seal Bay is something of a
sexual battlefield, a setting for all that is hilarious and tragic
in the confrontation between male and female. At the height of the
breeding season it is mayhem down here. The big bulls flounce
about, reeking of testosterone, striking poses and charging other
males who dare interrupt their orgies. They get the girl in
time-honoured fashion: a lot of sound and fury, a lot of bragging
and posturing, followed by a peremptory coupling that leaves their
dates with a quizzical look on their little whiskered faces. The
junior males keep out of sight, peering from behind boulders,
dreaming of the day when they too might devote a few seconds to the
females of their very own harem.